Impacts of Wechat on Millennials' Perceptions and Consumption Behaviors in the Hotel Industry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones 5-2017 Impacts of WeChat on Millennials’ Perceptions and Consumption Behaviors in the Hotel Industry Mengqi Cai University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the Hospitality Administration and Management Commons Repository Citation Cai, Mengqi, "Impacts of WeChat on Millennials’ Perceptions and Consumption Behaviors in the Hotel Industry" (2017). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 3200. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/13444795 This Professional Paper is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Professional Paper in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Professional Paper has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Impacts of WeChat on Millennials’ perceptions and consumption behaviors in the hotel industry by Mengqi Cai Bachelor of Science Nanjing Forestry University 2015 A professional paper submitted in particular fulfillment of the requirements for the Masters of Science Hotel Administration William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas May, 2017 Chair: Dr. Bo Bernhard Part One Introduction Social media, known as interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications, has deeply changed and reformed interpersonal communication and business operation with the wide spread of Internet and the development of technology. In the past few years, since mobile apps are becoming more and more popular, the access of social media is not limited to tablet computers only, but is also available for almost all kinds of smart phone devices, such as iPhone, Android, Symbian and so on. The function of social media is not confined to real-time message transmission or information sharing any more. It has expanded to a widely range of features, such as online purchase and payment, e-commerce business, and service for different types of social events. Social media plays an increasingly important role in daily personal life as well as in business activities. People are not merely considered as social media users, but also the component of social media itself. As a result, it is very crucial for people to realize the importance and impacts of social media, especially for those business operators. WeChat (Weixin in Chinses, literally “micro message”) is a cross-platform instant text and voice messaging communication service for multiple mobile devices, developed by Tecent in China, first released in the January of 2011. It is claimed to provide “the new way to connect” and create “a way of life”. It is free to download, install and register, and support all kinds of smart phone platforms with multiple language versions, such as Chinese, English, Japanese, French, and Spanish. WeChat provides its users different ways to communicate and interact with friends innovatively through instant text messaging, hold-to-talk voice 1 messaging, group messaging, lively video sharing, location sharing, money transferring, and contact information sharing. Among all the WeChat users, Millennials is the majority. With the growing-up of Millennials, they are becoming more and more powerful and important to the society and will be the next target segmentation for most of the industries in the very near future. Especially for the hotel industry, the industry that urges to attract Millennials patrons for further substantial development, how to attract Millennials is becoming a critical issue for those hotel operators. Purpose This paper aims at examining how WeChat, a highly popular Chinese social media phenomenon, impacts Millennials’ perception of hotel brands and their consumption behaviors with hotel experiences more generally. The purpose is to develop a marketing guide that will help Las Vegas megaresorts operators use WeChat to attract Chinese Millennial guests. Statement of objective The objectives of this paper include: 1) To analyze from earlier researches and studies, draw conclusion and hypotheses of the impacts of WeChat on Millennials’ perception and consuming behavior. 2) To make comparison between WeChat and other social media with multiple criteria: demographic statistics of users, different features and functions of the social media, use and application for marketing. Then find out the uniqueness and advantages of WeChat 2 that should be applied in the hotel industry. 3) To interview experts from the industry, who have knowledge and experience of using WeChat in marketing. Analyze how the realistic practices apply to the conclusion and hypotheses that come from the previous researchers and studies. 4) To do a case study and sum up how WeChat impacts on Millennials in the hotel industry and come to a conclusion or summary. 5) To analyze all the work above and come up with a guide that will help hotel operators in Las Vegas use WeChat to attract Chinese Millennial guests. Justification Previous studies are about the general research on social media’s marketing function in all industries. Studies of WeChat are mainly in China, target at Chinese users’ using habits and psychology, but don’t have any guidance to hotel industry. Thus, there is a research gap in current studies on the topic of how WeChat impacts Millennials’ perception and consuming behavior in hotel industry. This paper will have a narrow scope focused on hotel industry only rather than a wide range of industries. And the research will be a supplement to fill that gap. Constraints Use of WeChat is not the only reason that will impact Millennials’ perception and consuming behavior. It is very difficult to determine the cause-and-effect relationship between the use of WeChat and the outcomes. Besides, different types of hotels may have different customer segmentation and marketing strategies. Hotels may cater to customers in a completely 3 different way regarding to their features. As a result, the guide will not applicable to all types of hotels. 4 Part Two Introduction Social media networks, known as interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications, have deeply changed and reformed interpersonal communication and business operation with the wide spread of Internet and growing population of users. Along with the development of smart phones and mobile electronic equipment, the access of social media is not limited to tablet computers only, but is also available for many different types of electronic devices. A significant element of social media networks is recognized as user-generated content (UGC). Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication or consumer-to-consumer (C2C) conversations, are used to be the most influential channel of communication in the market place, which impacts consumers’ perception and attitudes to the products and brands significantly. Consumers consider other people’s personal experience and comments are more reliable and trustworthy than the marketing messages themselves (Shamhuyenhanzva, van Tonder, Roberts-Lombard & Hemsworth, 2016). Nevertheless, in most circumstances, the influence of traditional WOM is very limited and can only affect certain range of people, such as family members, friends, and colleagues, etc. with the constraints of time and location. However, the emergence of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, has greatly enable consumers to share their information and experiences in a public platform in groups of friends, or even strangers through what is now identified as electronic WOM (eWOM). Different from traditional WOM, eWOM shifted the focus to online communities with group characteristics instead of individual characteristic where message content matters most (Shamhuyenhanzva et al., 2016). eWOM also enables 5 consumers to communicate in a various online settings and approaches, which extend the influence of its consumers range. Considering the eWOM is occurring through increasingly different array of various electronic channels, more and more business operators and scholars are interested in evaluating its’ impacts to the industry. With the arising awareness of the effects of eWOM, promoting and managing the eWOM strategically, and optimizing the value of eWOM proactively seem to be crucial to many companies. The Power of eWOM The value of eWOM The “saying is believing effect” theory shows that people adapt and transmit their message in order to suit their audience. Especially in providing the biased message, people’s memory and judgment are influenced by those biased message and people come to believe the biased message that they provided. Kim, Naylor, Sivadas, and Sugumaran (2016) utilized the “saying is believing” effect as the theoretical framework and did an experimental study with a total of 166 undergraduate students. Kim et al. (2016) found that incentivized eWOM changes communicators’ attitude and the number of opportunities to engage in providing eWOM also affects the degree of change in attitude as well. This means that the more opportunities

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